Tin Lily Read Online Free Page B

remember she won’t be taking her car to work anymore or the bus when the old heap breaks down. She won’t be walking during good weather or having coffee breaks with her friends at the newspaper. She won’t be anything anymore.
    “You sure you want to do this, Lil?” Margie says. “Because I could just run in and grab up anything you need.”
    The house looks sad, like with Mom gone it doesn’t know how to be a house anymore. The drapes are drawn and yellow crime scene tape crisscrosses the red door. Mom likes everything open.
    “So we can play with the sunshine, Lilybeans, and have the outdoors right inside with us. ”
    Hank’s rage keeps everything closed, locked up tight. A rage mausoleum.
    I pull on the door handle, send out a little hope that I keep it together, forget to answer Margie.
    We walk up the front sidewalk—chipped concrete with old drawings, painted pictographs to tell us about the kids who lived here before. Mom never wanted to scrub them off.
    “Those kids put their whole hearts into their sidewalk art. We ’ ll enjoy it and imagine what they were like. What do you think? I ’ m guessing that pony with the pink mane was painted by a little girl who loves horses.”
    “That ’ s a pretty good guess, Mom.”
    “Smart Alec.”
    “Seriously. Your mental skills are staggering. I never would ’ ve guessed that.”
    “You know what this means.”
    “Don ’ t you dare.”
    “You asked for it, kid. Tickle time.”
    Officer Archie stands on the porch guarding the empty house. His hair is dull brown, like he hasn’t washed it in a week. Even the sun can’t make it shine. I don’t remember his dull hair. I remember his soft eyes, his Mack-Hank warning tone, his understanding.
    “Hello again, ladies,” he says. He reaches for one corner of the crisscrossed tape. “Please take what you want from your room, Lily, but don’t touch anything else. Understand?”
    “Okay.”
    I walk across the threshold first. Margie and Officer Archie come behind. To my right I see the empty place where plaster was. I see the window—a mosaic of splintered glass, grains of used-to-be sand still clinging to the sill and frame, still hoping for wholeness.
    To my left is the transformed living room. There’s plastic everywhere. Plastic covering Mom’s red halo, covering the pot of gold between the couch cushions.
    The walls are bare, the shrine gone, pictures and paintings and little metal sculptures all vanished into the ether. “Where is everything?”
    Officer Archie disappears behind the breakfast bar, then comes out with a big box in his arms. “We thought you might like to take them. I hope it’s okay we packed them for you.”
    “It’s okay,” Margie says. “Thank you for gathering these up.” She plucks something out of the box, studies it closely and looks up at me, her eyes surprised. “Did your dad make this?” She holds out the tiny silver cat.
    “Hank,” I say. “Yes.”
    She wraps her hand around it tight, tight, tight until her knuckles turn white. Then she relaxes her fist and puts the cat back in the box Officer Archie’s still holding.
    I know Hank’s cat has made my aunt mad, but I don’t have the curiosity in me to ask why. I slip my feet out of the flip flops Margie bought me and walk barefoot toward the stairs.
    “There’s broken glass—”
    “Not here.” Broken glass over there by the mantel. Facedown frames removed, put in a box, gathered up like they don’t hold fifteen years of everything that was my life.
    One step, another. Two steps, another.
    I stop behind the couch and touch its rough fabric.
    “Look at this couch, Lily! It ’ s not too bad. Maybe we can reupholster it someday. I ’ ll take a picture, see if the color works in our new living room.” Click. Snap.
    Margie’s breathing gets noisy. She’s seen Mom’s red halo through cloudy plastic, an arc of dried blood that says she used to be here, but now she isn’t.
    My focus: the couch because